Teens, tweens and kids are often referred to as “digital natives.” Having grown up with the Internet, smartphones and tablets, they’re often extraordinarily adept at interacting with digital technology. But Mitch Resnick, who spoke at TEDxBeaconStreet, is skeptical of this descriptor. Sure, young people can text and chat and play games, he says, “but that doesn’t really make you fluent.”

Mitch Resnick: Let's teach kids to code
Fluency, Resnick proposes in this TED Talk, comes not through interacting with new technologies, but through creating them. The former is like reading, while the latter is like writing. He means this figuratively — that creating new technologies, like writing a book, requires creative expression — but also literally: to make new computer programs, you actually must write the code.

The point isn’t to create a generation of programmers, Resnick argues. Rather, it’s that coding is a gateway to broader learning.“When you learn to read, you can then read to learn. And it’s the same thing with coding: If you learn to code, you can code to learn,” he says.Learning to code means learning how to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. And these skills are applicable to any profession — as well as to expressing yourself in your personal life, too.

In his talk, Resnick describes Scratch, the programming software that he and a research group at MIT Media Lab developed to allow people to easily create and share their own interactive games and animations. Below, find 10 more places you can learn to code, incorporating Resnick’s suggestions and our own.

At Codecademy, you can take lessons on writing simple commands in JavaScript, HTML and CSS, Python and Ruby. (See this New York Times piece on Codecademy and other code-teaching sites, for a sense of the landscape.).

One of many programs geared toward females who want to code, Girl Develop It is an international nonprofit that provides mentorship and instruction. “We are committed to making sure women of all ages, races, education levels, income, and upbringing can build confidence in their skill set to develop web and mobile applications,” their website reads. “By teaching women around the world from diverse backgrounds to learn software development, we can help women improve their careers and confidence in their everyday lives.”.

If college courses seem a little slow, consider Code Racer, a “multi-player live coding game.” Newbies can learn to build a website using HTML and CSS, while the more experienced can test their adeptness at coding..

The Computer Clubhouse, which Resnick co-founded, works to “help young people from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies,” as he describes. According to Clubhouse estimates, more than 25,000 kids work with mentors through the program every year..

Through CoderDojo’s volunteer-led sessions, young people can learn to code, go on tours of tech companies and hear guest speakers. (Know how to code? You can set up your own CoderDojo!).

Code School offers online courses in a wide range of programming languages, design and web tools..

Similarly, Treehouse (the parent site of Code Racer) provides online video courses and exercises to help you learn technology skills..

Girls Who Code, geared specifically toward 13- to 17-year-old girls, pairs instruction and mentorship to “educate, inspire and equip” students to pursue their engineering and tech dreams. “Today, just 3.6% of Fortune 500 companies are led by women, and less than 10% of venture capital-backed companies have female founders. Yet females use the internet 17% more than their male counterparts,” the website notes..

Through workshops for young girls of color, Black Girls Code aims to help address the “dearth of African-American women in science, technology, engineering and math professions,” founder Kimberly Bryant writes, and build “a new generation of coders, coders who will become builders of technological innovation and of their own futures.”

While we’re at it: bonus! General Assembly offers a variety of coding courses at their campuses across the globe. Additionally, their free online platform, Dash, teaches HTML, CSS and Javascript through fun projects on a simple interface that is accessible from your web browser.

As computers have gotten more complex, even tech literate users have become detached from the basics of how they function. This is what Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan noticed with their computer science students in Israel. As Schocken explains in this talk from TEDGlobal 2012, the pair decided to have their students build a working […]

Much ado has been made in recent years over the quickly rising cost of healthcare in the United States. But the cost of college tuition and fees has skyrocketed at nearly twice that rate. Going to college today will cost a student 559% more than it did in 1985, on average. In an exciting talk […]

I don’t do this sort of thing unless I think it’s really really important and having a great programming tool go Open Source is that important!

I LOVE MIT’s Scratch and have shared it for years and years. I taught my son to program with it. I am a LONG TIME programmer and have developed on most every tool and platform out there (Including Symbolics, Teraks, TRS-80s, PDP-11s, Silicon Graphics, Apple ][s etc!). Anybody remember HyperCard and the world of 4GL and xTalk languages? I sure do, and I always loved them also.

I’m taking some of my work time to let all people interested in programming know that there’s a wonderful way to take the next step into programming applications beyond Scratch in sandboxes and I think that Scratch and other learning audiences will really appreciate it this message.

The almost last xTalk (HyperTalk, SuperTalk, etc) language around is called…

LiveCode

It lets you DEPLOY apps for: Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iPhone, and Rasberry Pi all with a single click…

If you want to make real applications and you LOVE Scratch, then you’ll have a great transition to LiveCode.

I have zero affiliation with LiveCode.

The reason I’m writing this post is because right now LiveCode wants to go OPEN SOURCE and it needs ALL YOUR HELP!!!! The goal is big and they’re trying to get it into GitHub.

Please please please check this out and support the cause! You won’t regret it and you could help to bring about a “Revolution” that started when the Mac first came out with what started out as the coolest programming system around “Stacks” and “HyperTalk”.

Great list of tech programs geared to young women. Another one: http://www.dare2bdigital.org (girls in grades 7-10). Their 1-day conferences (ie Bay Area 2/9) let girls get their feet wet – from robotics to digital animation – with SV computing experts. Will share this with their community (I see some partners listed!). Thanks so much.